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January/February 2005
Many weeks have passed since the December 26th tsunami hit southern Asia; but the numbers of people lost are so staggeringly steep, the devastation to communities and countries so vast, and the global response so massive that many are still finding it incomprehensible.
“Although we live on opposite sides of the world, we and they are alike in every way that matters: we share the need to love and to be loved, to bear and care for children, to engage in meaningful work and creative recreation, to enjoy such simple things as family, food, and home; and, last but not least, to feel safe,” the Rev. Dr. Nancy Taylor, former Minister & President, said in a message to Conference members just after the disaster. “This disaster has deprived millions of people of these basic human needs.”
“We also share with them the precariousness of this life. With them, we acknowledge the randomness of events: of a disaster that struck there and not here, and took those lives while sparing these. With them, we rage at the injustice of it and ask why this has happened,” said Taylor, now Senior Pastor at Old South Church in Boston.
Reed Baer, Pastor of the West Parish of Barnstable, United Church of Christ, was relieved to receive a note from his church’s mission partner shortly following the disaster informing Baer that the region escaped harm. “We had been very worried,” says Baer, “because one of the low-lying fishing villages where the ministry is concentrated would certainly have been wiped out had the wave hit there.”
The note received from Baer's counterpart, the Rev. I. Rajkumar of St. Andrews Church, Gandhijikiramam (a village in Jaffna), Sri Lanka, outlines the sadness and hope of the affected people. “All our happiness have disappeared today. Almost all our areas are mourning the tragedy created by the sea quake which had played havoc which was never thought possible,” writes Rajkumar.
“We have stopped all the pompous celebrations planned for the festive season. Wherever we go we find mourning and lamenting as they have lost everything including their kith and kin. No one is in a position to console the mourning people as almost everyone is under the same predicament. This is the situation in the areas surrounding the Jaffna town. My brethren in Trincomalee (Eastern section) have also been severely affected.”
“As the victims continue to plead for rescue and deliverance, let us rise to answer their cries,” Taylor wrote. “They need to know that they are not alone … that their suffering is shared and that the world has not abandoned them. There is so much that we can do to assure them of these things: we have both the power of our prayers and the combined strength of our extravagant First World abundance.”
Rajkumar's church, although it doesn't have funds to donate, is providing relief by collecting dry food items from those who had not been affected. Baer's parish raised funds for the recovery efforts through a special offering as well as a spaghetti supper, open to the wider community.
“The need for material assistance is enormous and will continue to be so for months and years to come,” Taylor said. “We can give through international aid agencies, religious charities or specially established funds and we can insist that our government continue to give generously on our behalf.”
“My general impression is that the people of Sri Lanka are being served well by faithful members of the church there and its leaders,” said Phil Braudaway-Bauman, Trustee of Jaffna College Funds (a non-profit board that manages investments in support of educational endeavors in northern Sri Lanka). The local churches are working to provide help directly, without waiting for the wheels of official bureaucracies to turn. “It has been reported that relief agencies in Sri Lanka believe that every person victimized by the disaster in Sri Lanka will have received some form of assistance by now. It’s heartening to know that the church can be so effective in this situation. But that service will need to continue.”
Baer remarks, “What is truly humbling about this disaster is the way in which we see it uniting people from around the world; what we are doing here is but a mirror of what our partners in mission in Sri Lanka are doing, what Hindus and Buddhists are doing, what the Sri Lankan Army and the opposition Tamil Tigers are doing in unprecedented cooperation. Even as we grieve, we hope that this disaster might, in a strange but welcome way, be an opening through which reconciliation and peace might squeeze.”
Taylor concurs, “As we cry common tears and share one broken heart, so too, let us join in one common effort of comfort and healing, of relief and rebuilding. We have the ability to extend a compassionate reach across this damaged earth. How can we not?”